"Ronnie Rivera, a 15-year-old in braided pigtails, sits in a wheelchair in a narrow hallway of Hill Haven senior-citizen nursing home. A half-dozen other residents, many with dementia and most four to six decades older, sit nearby. Around them, a maintenance worker mops the linoleum floor.

Ronnie has lived in this single-story red-brick building since she was 10 years old, the only child among elders. Her mother, Iris Rivera-Smith, has tried unsuccessfully for years to get the financial help she would need to bring her daughter home.

Thousands of other children are growing up in nursing homes across the country, many for the same reason as Ronnie. Federal disability insurance guarantees nursing-home care for the disabled. But in many states, its coverage isn't enough to let those people, children included, live at home -- even when the cost to taxpayers, and the strain on families, is often much lower."

"For many outstate parents with severely disabled children, finding a residential facility in their community often isn’t an option. Many times the only place for children to get the services they need is in a residential facility or group home located out of town. A rural group is pioneering a program that allows disabled children to live at home and stay engaged in the community.

Home and Community Options (HCO) in Winona has operated a non-residential program for children with severe disabilities for the last seven years. They currently serve 70 families. HCO’s Family Resource Home provides physical and emotional support for disabled children in a home-like setting during the day while the children stay with their families at night."

"The June 2007 issue of the AFCC eNEWS is now available online. AFCC eNEWS is a bi-monthly e-newsletter published by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC). This issue of the AFCC eNEWS features international news from Australia, Canada, Iran and the UK, and free online audio from a workshop at AFCC’s 44th Annual Conference, entitled, Differential Assessment and Intervention in Domestic Violence Cases." By AFCC